Bringing the War Home. The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies

Based on a wealth of primary material, ranging from interviews to FBI reports, this book reconstructs the motivation and ideology of violent organizations active during the 1960s and 1970s. Author conveys the intense passions of the era - the heat of moral purpose, the depth of Utopian longing, the sense of danger and despair, and the exhilaration over temporary triumphs.

In this first comprehensive comparison of left-wing violence in the United States and West Germany, Jeremy Varon focuses on America's Weather nderground and Germany's Red Army Faction to consider how and why young, middle-class radicals in prosperous democratic societies turned to armed struggle in efforts to overthrow their states.


Varon's compelling interpretation of the logic and limits of dissent in democratic societies provides striking insights into the role of militancy in contemporary protest movements and has wide implications for the United States' current "war on terrorism." This book explores the international character of New Left rebellion by focusing on complementary experiences in two countries: the “armed struggles” of American and West German radicals.

TOC
1. “Agents of Necessity”: Weatherman, the Red Army Faction, and the Turn to Violence
2. The Importance of Being Militant: The Days of Rage and Their Critics
3. “Hearts and Minds”: The Antiwar Movement, Violence, and the Critical Mass
4. The Excesses and Limits of Revolutionary Violence
5. Deadly Abstraction: The Red Army Faction and the Politics of Murder
6. “Democratic Intolerance”: The Red Army Faction and the West German State